Experimental Philosophy

Online Consciousness Conference 2012

Readers of the blog may be interested in a number of papers from this year's Online Consciousness Conference. 

In addition to this year's keynote on the The Biological Cost of Consciousness by Bernard Baars, also check Peter Carruthers, Logan Fletcher, and J. Brendan Ritch's work in Evolving Self-Consciousness, arguing that evolutionary origins of  self-consciousness depend on the prior evolution of a mindreading system.

And also, in Does the S&M Robot Feel Guilty? Mark Phelan, Justin Sytsma and I, continue our earlier discussion (from this blog) on valence, function, and the folk dichotomy of phenomenal states.  Justin has provided some new experimental data on this topic since then that people interested in this question will want to check out.

Comments are open Feb 17-March 2, so be sure to head on over to OC4 and join in!

Experiment Month Results: Intuitions about Scientific Progress

People typically talk about scientific progress. But what does scientific progress amount to? In the philosophy of science literature, one can find three major accounts (See Darrell Rowbottom and Alexander Bird). The Epistemic (knowledge) view holds that people’s concept of scientific progress involves the accumulation of scientific knowledge. The Semantic (truth) view says that scientific progress involves the accumulation of true scientific beliefs, though not necessarily scientific knowledge. The Functional-Internalist (goal) view states that scientific progress primarily involves achieving either theoretical or technological scientific goals. When arguing for or against these three views, philosophers often rely on intuitions about how much progress people think scientists have made in hypothetical cases relative to the amount of knowledge, truth, or problem-solving outcomes that are generated. Typically, these philosophers assume that ordinary intuitions regarding these factors count as some of the best evidence for their particular approaches. But we might wonder: do actual ordinary intuitions best support the epistemic, semantic, or functional-internalist views?

To find out, Wesley Buckwalter and I ran the following 2x2x2 between-subjects experiment.

experimental philosophy & philosophy of science at Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science

Karola Stotz organized a panel at the PSA a couple of years ago, on the connections between x-phi and the philosophy of science, and she has more recently gotten most of the papers from it placed in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science.  They are now available online:

Stotz, "Philosophy in the trenches: from naturalized to experimental philosophy (of science)" [this is an introduction to the other three articles]

Weinberg and Crowley, "The x-phi(les): unusual insights into the nature of inquiry"

Stotz, "Experimental philosophy of biology: notes from the field"

Knobe, "Folk judgments about causation"